The plumber who opened a plumbing business and trapped himself
Michael Gerber noticed that the best plumbers, bakers, and mechanics kept making the same mistake — and it had nothing to do with their craft.
Picture a plumber who spends fifteen years getting very good at her trade. One morning she decides she's tired of working for someone else. She hands in her notice, rents a van, prints some business cards, and opens her own shop.
Within six months she's exhausted. She's fixing pipes all day, quoting jobs in the evenings, chasing invoices on weekends. She hasn't escaped her boss — she's become three bosses stacked on top of each other.
Michael Gerber gave this pattern a name in The E-Myth Revisited: the Fatal Assumption. It goes like this: if you understand how to do the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work. But a plumbing business is not plumbing. It is scheduling, pricing, hiring, training, marketing, and financial management — with some plumbing happening in the background.
Gerber's solution wasn't to work harder. It was to treat the business like a franchise prototype even if you never intend to franchise: build systems so thorough that someone else could run each piece. The craft that got you in the door is the last thing that will keep the doors open.